Samsung’s 2016 was a hot mess (pun intended) with the Note 7 blowing up in their face. C’mon Samsung. You know you have to officially wave the white flag when you release a phone, it spontaneously combusts, you have to recall and the phone and then you fix it, and then it continues to combust, and you have to recall the phone yet again. Phew, just typing the sentence there made me realize just how fiery of a mess Samsung had gotten into. But as with every product, out goes the old and in comes the new, and Samsung is back as the greatest iteration ever of its flagship phone, the Samsung Galaxy S8.

On the surface, you can clearly see that Samsung has changed up the design aspect of the phone. First off, there is now only one model, the Edge, so the flat variant of the phone will be discontinued. The S8’s front is now a clean slate of glass that covers the whole panel, with glass tapering off both edges of the phone to create a waterfall effect when the screen is turned on. Samsung has decided to do away with the front home button, and has relocated the fingerprint sensor to the side of the camera lens, and decided to go with on-screen soft keys instead. However, the S8 has two primary calling cards: it’s new elongated screen and it’s new virtual assistant, Bixby. The current market trend for smartphones calls for phones that have larger screens, and yet remain manageable so that they don’t hulk over. This is only achievable if the bezel (the part of the phone on the phone that is just useless space) is reduced. Thus, Samsung has substantially reduced the bezel and effectively created a phone that has a bigger screen, but is the same size as other large screen hybrid smartphones. Bixby, on the other hand, aims to be Samsung’s homegrown alternative to Google Now and Siri. It works as an assistant to handle your schedule, a calendar, as well as someone who brings you notifications based on your interests. As of now though, Samsung has yet to divulge more information regarding Bixby.

The S8 must be the device that erases the Note 7 from consumers’ minds. For a company on a consistent upward trajectory, it was dealt a death blow with the Note 7 disaster. If the S8 does not bring back lost customers to Samsung, the company may have to face the fact that they have just dealt Apple a massive advantage in the race for market share (especially in the US).